Canon ranked in top five for US patent awards for 33 consecutive years

The Canon Sure Shot Delsol used solar panels on its front cover to power some of the camera's functions. Solar power drove the AF system, the electro-magnetic shutter unit, film advance and even the flash. A secondary lithium battery was used as a back-up. C1995

Canon has proudly announced it ranked third in the world for the number of patents awarded to it by the US Patents Office during 2018. The company is quite used to being at the top of the table though, and has managed to remain in the top five every year for the last 33 – since 1985. The company also says that it has ranked as the number one Japanese company in the charts for the last 14 years.

Canon explains in a statement that the US is an important market not only for its products but also for its technologies. The company says its innovations ‘serve society’ as they lead to better products, more convenience and improved manufacturing techniques.

It is important to remember the photography is just a part of Canon’s business, but it would be interesting to know what proportion of its 3000+ awarded patents last year came from its photographic operations.

Press release

Canon places top five in U.S. patent rankings for 33 years running and first among Japanese companies for fourteen years running

TOKYO, January 8, 2019—Canon Inc. ranked third for the number of U.S. patents awarded in 2018, becoming the only company in the world to have ranked in the top five for 33 years running, according to the latest ranking of preliminary patent results issued by IFI CLAIMS Patent Services. What's more, Canon once again ranked first among Japanese companies.

Canon actively promotes the globalization of its business and places great value on obtaining patents overseas, carefully adhering to a patent-filing strategy that pursues patents in essential countries and regions while taking into consideration the business strategies and technology and product trends unique to each location. Among these, the United States, with its many high-tech companies and large market scale, represents a particularly important region in terms of business expansion and technology alliances.

Canon promotes the acquisition and application of intellectual property rights, not only for fundamental technologies required for next-generation products, but also such technologies as the wireless communication and image compression technologies shared by next-generation social infrastructure. Canon contributes to the realization of technology that serves society by continuing to provide even better products, greater convenience and by contributing to the development of manufacturing.

"Canon cameras are number one is no because they have more features & specs, is because they have Canon colors (Canon color science)."

Not everyone cares for the Canon colors. Almost all of your reasons are preference-related. I mean, so you're a Canon fan... nobody is bashing you for that. People like certain brands for various reasons. For me, it's Fuji and NIkon, for someone else it's probably Sony.

@MrDigital, After almost 4 decades in photography, most of it is with Canon, last thing I need is someone like you to open my eyes. All I see is b.ee.s in your lines, b.ee.s coming from, obliviously not, a photographer but some keyboard warrior.

For the part about Canon features... it depends on if the features benefit the photographer or not. Generally speaking, A landscape photographer would probably find very little use for eye AF. For someone who never shoots people, things like eye AF aren't a criteria. So to make an argument that one camera is better than another brand because it has more features is subjective to if the photographer finds those features useful or not. My D750 lacks on several features found in newer cameras (and ML bodies, like IBIS, eye AF, focus assist) but I do mainly landscapes with that camera, so none of those features (except maybe focus assist and IBIS, but not eye AF) would help me (plus I've learned to work around them, just as people with film have done).

I agree @MrDigital why bashing a brand that offer amazing cameras probably just because is not the one you are shooting with, this is what I call the real keyboard warrior.I have been with Canon the last 20 years and I am completely satisfied with their lineup, but I don't mind shooting with other brands either, a camera is only a tool, what's important is the eye behind it and the story your create.

That's surprising. I'd expect companies like NEC, Fujitsu or Sony to have more patents.

Then again, patent spam is a thing, these giant tech companies patent every little tidbit they can, so that another tech giant can't make that particular tidbit but has to patent and make a very slightly different tidbit, or license the original tidbit patent from the first tech giant in exchange for a patent for some wazaloo.

It's also the reason why a regular person can't patent anything these days unless they can mortgage a couple of houses.

Why? Canon is already selling much more than the main competitor (Nikon), and its new ML sold more than Sony in the Q4-2018 (Nikon Z sold a fraction of both...). The fact that few or no Canon fans are jelling online doesn't mean Canon product are less appreciated. :-)

I expect 50% of those patents are for systems that deliberately make their printers eat through ink cartridges more quickly than the previous model. Another 25% will be for ink cartridge designs named "XL" or "XXL", but which contain no more (or less) ink than the previous generation of "standard" ink cartridge.

I think they use more of them than is obvious to us consumers. Not all patents are for the kind of high-profile features that get mentioned in product announcements. There's lots of little things going on inside a camera, lens or printer that we aren't aware of. And some of the patents are for manufacturing tech, like automated assembly lines.

Their peak of 4,127 patents in 2015 works out to nearly one patent every two hours, 24/7 year-round. That's incredible! Now I'm wondering what companies were first and second these last eight years, and how many patents they were awarded (per day, per hour, per second...)

Why not compare a ford model T to a modern rolls royce as they both have a wheel at each corner and a person has to drive them, the thing with sony no one can get away from is they could leave the market tomorrow whereas canon and nikon will be around for decades

The sensor market is huge and will only expand as more cars and phones use them, the camera sector is dwindling as the prices go up, to expand the camera market we need to get more people into the hobby but as phones are more than good enough for the majority and the biggest reason phones do so well is their simplicity unlike proper cameras with all the buttons and dials that put most beginners off

Good example that the number of patents does not need to correlate with best-in-camera technology, in Canon's case especially sensors. Canon fell back when they didn't compete with other released high MP/high DR full frame sensors - the 5DsR came years too late to the market when better competitive sensor options existed. Canon never recovered from this in the full frame camera segment (they are still selling lots of Rebels though....)

The patent wouldn't be for a capacitive touch panel in general, but for the exact way in which Canon is using it. So it's definitely patentable.

Anyway, I think many of the patents don't relate to Canon's products per se, but rather to manufacturing technology, as mentioned briefly in the press release. Canon has spent a lot of resources on automating their camera production, for example, and I bet a lot of patents cover such technologies.

I heard it has a new feature ! The more you slide it to the right the more it sends the other manufacturers back to the drawing board trying to figure out how they are going to compete with Canon's RF Lens arsenal ! Happy shooting !

I think Canon will build their RF lens line a lot faster than Nikon will build their Z lens line. Meanwhile, with both brands, we are stuck with "seamless" adapted lenses, which may possibly focus as rapidly as DSLR lenses, but will not give us the promised optical benefits and fast camera-lens communication that RF and Z lenses will allegedly provide.

The Sigma lens line for the Panasonic S1R will probably develop rapidly, but most will just be reincarnated DSLR lenses....

Meanwhile, Sony, of course, already has a near-complete native lens line, as well as being able to use DSLR lenses via metabones.

Hey, I like that swipe bar! I guess I'm the only one... I set it to control Kelvin WB, and it's freaking awesome for dialing in perfect colors on the fly for portraits and weddings. Definitely saves hours per month in color-correction, to be able to nail Kelvin through the EVF so effortlessly. (And also nail exposure, thanks to having that ring command dial on the lens, which I use for ISO or EV comp on the fly...)

I'd say indeed. Sales might be bad but that may be because my pixma ip6000d is still functioning perfectly after 15 years of use and over a 1000 of letter-size photoprints. And, for that era, the totally automatic installation on a pc was a dream come true.

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